Asian Culture Festival 2011 - Food

Vietnamese gals from Viet Style who know how to bring it!

Coconut dessert cooked in CAST IRON, the best material for cooking anything! The more you use it, the more patina & becomes a natural non-stick!  I love the whole setup! They had a huge crowd just fascinated watching.

Wonderful idea, lots of work, stuffing bamboo stick with sticky rice & red beans.

Tammi makes fresh Thai curry puffs & banana leaf desserts! I bought some, see other Asian Culture Festival post.

Indian food.

Viet Style had the nicest booth display, with orchids, good job. It's where the gorgeous gals are!

Chinese food.

Veggies and Venza

Test driving a Toyota Venza, vroom, vroom gets you a beautiful Boos chopping board and a huge, lovely hessian shopping bag.

Wow, this board is solid, weighs a ton, so I'm not going to move it. It's perfect for taking my food shots, so now I have a permanent space for it. This is the setup for the Pineapple, Mango Salsa I made for Fourth of July celebrations.

Problem with holding events outdoors in Florida is you're at the mercy of the weather. It rained on and off all afternoon, so it was surprising there was even a crowd. But guess whenever there's free food, you'll get the crowds. It was nice to spend time with Paula of mangoandlime. She wrote a more descriptive, foodie blog with photos from the event.

This is ratatouille and goat cheese croquette from Chef Xavier.

Bella Cuba's avocado and tomatoes on top of a corn crunchy, much better description by Paula!

Dean Richardson of Tropical Treescapes Inc. likes to grow veggies that are unusual. Never seen red yard long beans. Some of the chefs were using his veggies. Maybe we can get him to bring some to one of my Wok Star cooking classes and cook them?

It was wonderful to see how the chefs came up with their dishes, especially Chef Marcelo from Le Cordon Bleu. Here's the Deconstructed Salad.

For me, gourmet food is best left to restaurant chefs who have sous chefs to assist them and can source specialty items from purveyors. I met a very nice Cordon Bleu student, who is Jamaican Chinese, always find it fascinating the mix of cultures and cuisines.

Going out to eat means two things to me - either savoring unique, off the wall dishes which tend to be on the expensive side or enjoying well prepared food at reasonable prices. I am going to post about a few soon because people keep asking me.

His liquid nitrogen, smokin' Deconstructed Salad was a show stopper.

Different stages of his Deconstructed Salad.

Whenever you ate a dish, you got a stamp in your "Passport" and after 3 stamps, you get a nice potted herb plant. Ralph and I managed to get a mint and parsley. I mentioned Claire Tomlin's The Market Company in Organic and Farmer's Market, they were responsible for organizing this event and think they did a great job, considering the rain.

We had Claire on our TV show: Open to the Public, years ago when Ralph and I used to produce TV shows on Miami Beach. Yes, another hat I used to wear and would like to get back into it, well, not the producing so much but appearing. You can see an excerpt of me interviewing a chef, scroll down to bottom of my BIO.

Mis en place on one of those beautiful Boos chopping boards!

Grimpa's croquettes. I was too full to have any.

Adriana in Surfside's Tilapia ceviche.

All in all, it was a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon. We also got to spend time with friends and their grandkids who enjoyed the Florida rain. You'll see them at my Fourth of July Celebrations.

Tiger Beer Wok Star Tour

I just completed the first leg of my "Tiger Beer Wok Star" tour visiting eight Sweetbay Supermarkets in the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area. My kickoff appearances coincided with the Asian Lunar New Year... an auspicious beginning since the year of the "Golden Pig" only occurs every six hundred years.

I use the term "Wok Star" to distinguish myself from "celebrity chefs" and analogy to music, drawing a distinction between the "rock star" and the classically trained musician. I learned to cook from my mother so I've taken the traditional flavors I grew up on and adapted them to the western kitchen. Lacking a formal culinary education, my style and approach to cooking has many of the elements of rock and roll... improvisation, creating from the heart, and following the maxim, "If it tastes good, do it." I'm adamant that, "ANYONE can be a Wok Star" and proved my point by inviting people to join me for an impromptu stir-fry.

The tour gave me an opportunity to meet so many people interested in Asian cooking. "Everybody's searching for meals that are fast, fun, and flavorful and that's what wok cooking offers." The most frequent question I encountered on the tour was, "What kind of wok should I get?" For those who already owned a wok, the most common problem they encountered was "soupy" stir-frys. I provide the solutions and the answers in my "Wok Star Cooking Kit" which bundles everything you need to get started in one box: a light weight cast-iron wok, DVD's with my "Easy Style" lessons, and a caddy basket with dispensers to organize your Asian ingredients.

Tiger Beer sponsored the tour and created a sweepstakes to give away thirty of my Wok Star Cooking Kits. Tiger Beer was the perfect sponsor because, "In Asia, cold beer is the favorite drink to serve with spicy Asian food." My plans are to continue the tour until, "Everyone in the world knows how to stir-fry". So, I've created www.worldwidewok.com to expand my approach to cooking. I'll simplify exotic and delicious dishes without sacrificing its authenticity or taste, all cooked in a wok! I'll announce its launch soon.

In the meantime, you can see photos from the Tiger Beer Wok Star tour on my website at www.eleanorhoh.com or for your east-west horoscope, go to www.tigerbeer.us.